Then how do you make sense out of the following Scripture like Luke 10:25-28, Matthew 19:17-19, Matthew 25:31-46, 1 John 3:15, Titus 1:16, and Romans 8:13?
I know this wasn't addressed to me, but I agreed with Oscar's post, so these are my thoughts.
Luke 10:27
The lawyer correctly answered that the first commandment is to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. Later on, John wrote that we love because he first loved us, 1 John 4:19, and Jesus also told us to love as he loves us. He loves us with divine, Agape love; we cannot love others, or God, with that kind of love unless God first gives it to us.
We were sinners and deserved death, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23. Yet instead of death, condemnation, destruction, God showed his love by sending his Son who offered his life for us sinners, John 10:11, Romans 5:8. We were first shown love by God and we respond to him with love; we love because he first loved us.
So we are told to love God - which we can't do until and unless we have been born again and received his love, which is also a fruit of the Holy Spirit. We can't love God if we don't know him - as a teenager, church goer and "trying to impress God with works" person I used to try to make myself fall in love with a picture of Jesus because I couldn't see any other way of loving him. I didn't have a relationship with him; he was someone I was trying to please and get on side.
Matthew 19:17-22
When asked about eternal life, Jesus said the man should keep the last 6 commandments - those which related to loving your neighbour. The man replied that he already kept these.
But then Jesus challenged him to keep the first 2 commandments - love God and don't have any idols - and he did this by telling the man to give away what was most dear to him; money. The man went away sad because he was not prepared to do that. Maybe he couldn't do it because he didn't know how much God loved him - he hadn't been healed or forgiven, for example.
Contrast that with the woman who poured out her expensive perfume on Jesus' feet because she knew how much she had been forgiven, Luke 7:37-47.
Matthew 25:31-46
Scripture says elsewhere that we believers will be rewarded, or not, for what we have done, 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, 2 Corinthians 5:10.
But if Jesus was saying here that eternal life depends on someone's works, he would be contradicting what he said elsewhere, e.g John 6:40, and what his apostles taught, John 3:36, 1 John 5:12, Acts of the Apostles 4:12.
1 John 3:15
Yes, but see 1 John 3:14 - we know that we have passed form death to life because we love our brothers. Our love for our brothers (and sisters) will be the evidence that we have passed from death to life - been born again. New life and a new heart come first - we love because he first loved us.
No one is saying that a Christian shouldn't do good works, but they cannot be the sole indicator of our love for God. Plenty of atheists, humanists and those of other faiths do good works.
The NEW commandment that Jesus gave us, was to love a he loved us.
We cannot keep that unless we have first been born again and received God's love.